stephen's blog » Web Development

I hate people that use javascript: in links!

Stephen — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:27:18 +0000

Seriously. It’s just plain annoying, and it’s bad practice. Time and time again, I go and read an article, which has a few little pictures. Now, when we click a link, we expect it to open in the window (or tab) that we’re currently on. So instead of clicking an image, I’ll middle click it to open it in a new tab for viewing after I’m finished reading the page.

What should happen is that I have a few tabs showing the full image in them. What often does happen though is that instead, I have four or five tabs with blank pages and javascript:show_image_popup(…) or something in the address bar. It’s now very irritating to have to go back and find the article if I want to actually see the pictures.

So don’t ever do this:
href="javascript:show_image_popup('lolcat.jpg')"> ...

The right way
href="lolcat.jpg" onclick="show_image_popup('lolcat.jpg')"> ...
Notice that the link actually points to the picture now? This way, when I open the link in a new window, or a new tab, I actually see what I want to see – the picture. If I just normally click it though, the javascript runs and you can pop up your annoying image window. Now, I hear you asking “but won’t the browser navigate away from this page if the link is set to the picture?”. The answer is no, as long as you make sure your javascript function returns false.

New Site for Symmetry

Stephen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:46:11 +0000

I recently made a new website for my operating system project, Symmetry. The old site I was using for it was basically just the default WordPress theme with a slightly different header image. The new site is a completely custom theme that I made, and I think it is a lot simpler and cleaner.

I also did a bit of re-branding as well. Although the project has retained its logo, I made up a new name for it – Symmetry. I had been wanting to change the name for a while, but never got around to it until I decided to sign up for free Git hosting at Gitorious. It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing – I needed to put in a project name, so I thought for a few seconds and came up with Symmetry. It fits in with the old logo, and the old name can be used as an abbreviation – Symmetry Operating System (sos).

Updated Blog

Stephen — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 13:22:40 +0000

I have updated the blog to the newest version of WordPress recently. In fact, I am running the bleeding edge version from the Subversion repository. So now when I need to upgrade, all that should be required is SSHing into the server and doing an svn up in the directory.

You’ll also notive that I moved the blog out of its own subdomain, and into the main site. I think its better this way, and makes it easier to keep all the images and media together.

And finally, I hope you like the new design! I have been working on the new site for a while now, and I think that it is much improved from the old version.